Fred Taylor is a bust . . . in Canton

Several years ago, when I was a columnist for the Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville, the Jaguars picked Fred Taylor in the first round of the NFL draft.

During that first preseason, Taylor, the former University of Florida star, looked pretty terrible and there was some grumbling on talk radio. One of my editors, a huge Jags fan who listened to way too much talk radio, approached me one day and said, "Maybe you should write a column about Fred Taylor being a bust."

Thankfully, I declined to write the column and respectfully told the editor I'd like to at least wait until the regular season started before making such a definitive statement.

Well, here we are 11 years and more than 11,000 yards later and Fred Taylor is finally leaving the Jacksonville Jaguars not as a bust but as one of the greatest running backs in NFL history.

Yeah, I know, you don't really think of Taylor as one of the all-time greats, do you? Well, there's a reason for that: Because he has spent his entire career stuck in little ol' dirty-faced Jacksonville, playing for a team that has never gone to the Super Bowl and hasn't been relevant in years.

On another team in another town and we're probably talking about Taylor being a potential first-ballot Hall-of-Famer right now. If he played for the Steelers like Jerome "The Bus" Bettis, he'd have some sort of catchy nickname like "Freight Train Freddy" and be chugging toward Canton. If he played in New York or Dallas, he'd be revered as one of the most explosive backs to ever play the game.

But because he played in Jacksonville, nobody knows how great Fred Taylor once was. The man is 16th on the all-time NFL rushing list with 11,271 yards, and by the time he retires he'll probably be ranked in the top 10.

To me, though, the truest measure of a back's greatness isn't total yards, but career yards per carry. Of all the backs in front of him on the all-time rushing list, only the great Jim Brown (5.2 yards per carry), Barry Sanders (5.0) and O.J. Simpson (4.7) have a better average than Taylor (4.6).

In his day, Fred was the ultimate home-run hitter. He could take it 70 yards anytime and against anybody. Former Jaguars offensive lineman Leon Searcy, an Evans High grad, told me once Taylor was like an electrical storm when he touched the ball.

The slightest crease and Fred was gone. But, sadly, never gone like this -- gone for good from the only team he ever wanted to play for.

This is the shame of the Jags jettisoning him and his $5 million salary earlier this week. In a day and age where sports superstars crave bigger markets and bigger salaries, Taylor always seemed content in Jacksonville.

He never became a locker room cancer like Corey Dillon or Edgerrin James. He never complained when he had to share carries with a younger player like Maurice Jones-Drew. He even offered to take a pay cut and renegotiate his contract just so he could end his career in Jacksonville.

But the Jaguars were simply ready to move past Taylor, and you can't really blame them. They have a younger back now in Jones-Drew whom they believe has star potential. And do you really want Taylor, the greatest player in franchise history and a leader in the locker room, sitting on the bench looking over the kid's shoulder?

What cruel irony. For most of his career, Taylor was too good to be playing in an out-of-the-way outpost where his talent was too often overlooked. Then, in the end, he gets dumped because outpost officials decide he's not quite good enough anymore.

More than a decade later, maybe that old editor of mine was right when he suggested a column about Fred Taylor becoming a bust.